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Wednesday, August 3, 2011

When You Can’t Stand, Run.

It is an ordinary Tuesday afternoon as Tuesday afternoons
tend to be, except that I am flying home from an extended visit to France,
nearly ready to return a copy of the recently mentioned “The Memory of Running”
book to Mike of SMR—nearly ready but not quite. Mike graciously invited a
review of the book and because I enjoyed it so extravagantly, I’m happy to write.

As you might already know, “The Memory of Running” is a
transformation story, told by its protagonist, Smithson “Smithy” Ide, a
friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk, to quote the book’s back
cover. Smithy approaches one of those fork-in-the-road junctures where he has
to take a few hard looks at his life and decide how to go on. The situation is
unspeakably tragic; he has just learned of the death of both his parents and his
younger sister, Bethany (“my Bethany,” he says) within the time span of a
single week. What adds to the agony is that Smithy has spent much of his
growing-up years literally running courageous searches for Bethany who’s
intermittent psychotic episodes cause her to go missing and harm herself in
astonishing and public ways.

Says Smithy, “A person doesn’t get over a family. Sometimes things happen that make a
person feel like standing up is just too much...”

It’s one of those times and Smithy is evidently going down,
increasingly dependent on the daily packs of Winston cigarettes, the Vodka, all
those beers, the crappy food. He acts like an asshole. His body becomes
sedentary, almost immobile, strangely a little like his sister in one of her
motionless psychosis-induced poses.

At one point, we learn of a pivotal conversation between
brother and sister during the time prior to her disappearance and death.
Noticing the beginnings of her brother’s deterioration, Bethany—usually the
subject of his concern—puts Smithy on
the spot. “I’m not worried that I’m crazy, that I’m going to be crazy. Now I’m
worried about you.” Smithy laughs a little, tires suddenly, and casually suggests
the worry is unwarranted.

But she gently continues. “Can I tell you something, Hook?
(her nickname for him) Can I?” He consents, sort of… “I think you’re turning
into a fucking fat-ass slob,” she says. “Also, I think you’re drunk a lot. I
think you’re drunk right now.”

Bethany asks if he remembers how he used to look for her and
let her ride his bike home while he ran beside her. “I’m afraid you’ve stopped
running, and I don’t want you to. I want you to stay a runner. I want you to
remember running.”

Smithy listens, a tribute to the bond between them. Not easy
for him, though. Looking back on the conversation he says, “I had this feeling
of somewhere a mad scientist fooling around with his beakers and vials, and he
had me strapped to a chair, and there was nothing I could do.” Well ok,
sometimes a sister might get a little carried away.

When Bethany says she wants him to stay a runner, she’s
saying a lot. ‘Running’ in the book, is a metaphor for hoping, taking action, for
thriving and being fully alive, but the meaning of the word is not only abstract.
Running, according to Bethany, literally requires the passionate and intense
movement of the body, whether you are Norma, the Ides’ family friend, sitting
tall and strong in a wheelchair, or whether you’re riding the maroon 3-speed
Raleigh bike. Running is not just an approach to life; it’s the daily practice
of moving one’s body to its fullest capacity, with abandon, and with discipline
and determination.

In the new grief of his parents’ and sister’s deaths, Smithy
makes a tenuous but irrevocable return to his running past. Just as he used to,
he jumps on his old bike without plan or preparation in search of his sister
for one last time. His destination is the Cheng Ho Funeral Home, many states
away from his Rhode Island neighborhood.

And here begins one of my favorite things about the book. As
Smithy begins to move his body again, we see other things in his life beginning
to move as well. As he peddles long days through rain, sun, wind, on freeways
and rural gravel roads, he slowly wakes up to himself, comes to his senses—he
begins to taste, touch, see, hear. He experiences aching muscles, sweat, his
heartbeat, and the deep sweet satisfaction of rest that follows intense
exertion. He wakes up to his surroundings too, to the people he meets, some
whom he has known for a very long time. He feels sadness, trust, desire.

We don’t ever get over a family. The book shows us how true
this can be, how the people we love keep forming and shaping us profoundly, long
after they pass on. Bethany’s words stay with Smithy, and maybe they resonate
with all of us runners. “What are you going to do,” she asks, “… stay a runner…
remember running.”

I could never summarize a book like this, nor would I want
to; it’s made of action and unrepeatable moments and its conclusions, if it has
any, are modest, provisional, and open-ended. But maybe travelers and readers
have something in common—we want to take something with us when the adventure
is ending. If that impulse is ok, here’s something I’d gratefully carry with me
from the book: Bethany’s wisdom, which becomes Smithy’s also: When things
happen that make standing up feel it’s just too much, the thing to do—the only
thing to do—is run. Stay a runner.

Hope I can remember that some day when I need to. Returning
your book now, Mike, with a thousand thanks for the wonderful read.

Jan

"Plans just happen, I have found out. I was someone who never had a plan, so it shook me up to see how simple they were to make and how often they just made themselves. It was a tender kind of secret and I loved knowing it."Smithson Ide